To celebrate the unveiling of Michael Rakowitz's Fourth Plinth commission "The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist" in London's Trafalgar Square, Plinth held a pop up to launch a brand new range of products and a new limited edition.

Press Release

Plinth have collaborated with the Mayor of London’s Culture Team on the Fourth Plinth for the second year running and were proud to support the unveiling of The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist by Michael Rakowitz,on 28th March. To celebrate the occasion, we coordinated a pop-up space in Trafalgar Square, ’The House with a Date Palm’, where press and public, friends and family were invited to taste recipes inspired by thesculpture, constructed from over 10,000 cans of date syrup (we served up date and ginger cake by Honey & Co. and Silan wa Rashi — a traditional Iraqi breakfast). Rakowitz is keen to inspire more people to cook with date syrup, and worked with us at Plinth to design a range of culinary merchandise including an apron, tea towel and wooden spoon.

‘In Iraq, it is traditional for parents to place a date in the mouth of their newborn baby, so its first taste of life is sweet: a harbinger of good thingsto come. To celebrate this, I have teamed up with Plinth and a cast of cooks — from my mother, Yvonne David Rakowitz to local London chefs, like Lamees Ibrahim and Claudia Roden — to collate traditional recipes and propose new ones that use Iraqi date syrup.’ - Michael Rakowitz.

Our new limited-edition artwork by Rakowitz, A House With A Date Palm Will Never Starve, comprises a tin of Karbala date syrup (one of 2376 used to create the statue, reflected in the edition’s size of 2376) and a recipe booklet signed and illustrated by the artist. It features texts from Michael himself, Ella Shohat and Justine Simons OBE. The recipes will join many others in a larger volume to be published as an extension of the range planned for autumn of this year. Chefs from London and beyond have contributed: Michael’s mother Yvonne Rakowitz, Linda Dangoor, ClaudiaRoden, Honey & Co., Margot Henderson — and Lamees Ibrahim, author of The Iraqi Cookbook. Discover our new range, sold alongside Lamees’ seminal volume, at plinth.uk.com